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An interview with Riversimple

sexta-feira, 18 de setembro de 2009 ·

An interview with Riversimple

Riversimple shot to fame in June 2009 when they unveiled arguably the most exciting development for British green car technology yet; the two-seater Riversimple hydrogen prototype. As a small UK-based business aiming to produce highly energy-efficient vehicles for personal transport; Riversimple says its vision is of a world where our relationship with the car is dramatically changed for the better.

Hugo from Riversimple2

As the brainchild of Hugo Spowers, a former motorsport engineer and racing driver, Riversimple was formed in 1999 after Spowers left the glittering world of racing when he become concerned for the environmental impact of his chosen industry. He spoke to TheGreenCarWebsite.co.uk to explain more about Riversimple's plans for the prototype and his hopes for a hydrogen-driven future.

Q: You are inspired by work by Amory Lovins lightweight network electric vehicles, will hydrogen fuel cells remain your focus or will you look at other fuel sources like battery electric too?

A: We certainly will look at other fuels and prime movers; we are not a fuel cell or a hydrogen company.  Our vehicle architecture is not fuel cell-specific; it is based an electric platform anyway.  Our purpose is 'to move people sustainably, and we will pursue our purpose by working systematically towards the elimination of the environmental impact of personal transport', and we will not bang our heads against a brick wall championing hydrogen if something better comes along.  I certainly believe that in future there will be a much more complex mix of powertrains and fuels; hydrogen will never be as dominant as petrol, and fuel cells never as dominant as combustion engines.  Having said that, energy efficiency will become the dominant metric that dictates the choice between these options and for vehicles with a significant installed range, greater than about 150 miles, I do not believe that there is anything on the horizon that can be remotely as efficient as an efficient hydrogen FC vehicle, so that is where we are focussing our efforts.

Q: You have made the design plan for the Urban Car 'open source'. Does this mean you don't expect large-scale investment and production into the Urban Car?

A: No, but it is fair to say that we believe that the industry will look very different in the future. We are concentrating on the urban sector initially in order to crack the chicken and egg dilemma of refuelling infrastructure.  An urban car does not travel intercity and so one can launch in a city with only a city-wide infrastructure; reproducing this in multiple cities allows the incremental development of a nationwide network without ever taking a nationwide gamble.  However, we are not an urban car company and we regard this as a stepping stone to intercity capable family cars.  We have gone open source to accelerate the uptake of this technology and to accelerate the adoption of new standards for technology and the delivery of personal transport to customers.  It is absolutely not meant to imply that the vision is limited to niches.  However, we do believe that migration from steel to composites as the key structural material for automotive production leads to a much lower optimal scale of production for vehicles.  Open source allows multiple manufacturers to cooperate in developing not just the standards but critically the entire supply chain.

Q: You say that the Urban Car does an equivalent of 300 miles to the gallon, how is this calculated?

A: This is comparing the total energy consumed, based on the calorific equivalent energy content (Lower Heating Value or LHV) of the hydrogen compared to the volume of petrol consumed in a car running on petrol that uses the same amount of energy.

Q: Technically speaking, what do you see as the biggest obstacle to a hydrogen driven economy?

A: I've really scratched my head on this one because everything of which I can think is technically possible, even now.  The barriers are perceived to be fuel cell power density, fuel cell cost and hydrogen storage density.  I believe that all three barriers are very real for the auto industry but they are not true in any absolute sense.  They, necessarily and understandably, are pursuing an incremental path to adoption of fuel cells, cramming them into cars optimised for over 80 years around combustion engines, but this creates these barriers, so they are self-inflicted and we are just making it very difficult for ourselves!  Although I completely understand why they are doing what they are doing not what we are doing.  There are technical hurdles still to overcome if you want a Ferrari, but not for a Ford Focus.

Riversimple car image

Q:  You plan to lease Urban Car models. How much would we be looking at if you decided to sell them instead?

A: The blunt answer is that we would design a different car, so it is difficult to give a direct answer!  What we are doing must not be confused with leasing as currently practiced, which is a tool for managing demand and stimulating it in times of economic downturn.  We are designing a solution to providing a mobility service, in which all costs are fully bundled, so we have a direct financial interest in minimising maintenance and maximising vehicle longevity, reliability, vehicle lifespan and ownership cycles.  This is the opposite of the current situation and rewards resource minimisation rather than maximisation; if you sell cars, you make more money by selling more cars, more spare parts and more servicing (acknowledging the competitive market, but it is still true that all competitors are working within the same context).  Our service also bundles the fuel, so we have a direct interest in reducing consumption, whereas manufacturers who sell cars have no direct financial concern about this.

This all has a profound effect on vehicle design. We joke about built-in obsolescence but greater product churn increases sales and there is no escaping that fundamental reality!  Witness the huge decline in the lifespan of white goods; fridges used to be reliable for at least 3 decades, but won't last for one now.  We also push this model upstream, leasing from our supply chain.  I first realised the necessity for this in about 2001 when considering the pitch to Shell to develop completely closed loop composite resin systems in which the resin could be 100 per cent recovered and recycled at end of vehicle life, with only an extra injection of energy, no raw material.  Putting steel out of business in the auto sector would be an attractive opportunity for an oil extractor!  But they would be mad to do so; after 20 years or so, enough would be going round in circles that their market would not just soften but completely collapse.  The only way this would make sense is if they leased the resin to the manufacturers; in this case, they would have ever increasing revenue streams with ever-decreasing oil inputs, great if you're under pressure to reduce extraction!

The big lesson from this is that there is no possibility in a sale of product world of developing the technologies that are possible and that we need; in other words, there is no hope of a sustainable industrial society based on the sale of product – it rewards the opposite of what we are trying to achieve.  Sorry for such a long-winded non-answer!

Q: We understand that your car operates on minimal power compared other hydrogen cars (like the Honda FCX Clarity) thanks to the use of ultracapacitors to recapture the braking energy so that you have enough energy to accelerate again. But what happens when a car is charged-down; is there some way of topping up the electrical charge?

A: Yes, the fuel cell will be able to charge the ultracaps directly, and indeed does so regularly during the drive cycle, whenever the motor is demanding les than full power and the ultracap voltage is lower than the control system wants it to be (the desired voltage is related to vehicle speed; we want them full when stationary and fairly low at top speed).  However, the car does not need much in the ultracaps to start – just enough to fire up the control system and open the hydrogen valve – and then the fuel cell can charge the ultracaps, although you only need them for aggressive acceleration.  Also, the ultracaps hold their charge very well indeed and finally it is possible that there will be a tiny battery on the production version to power up the systems as described above.

Q:With 30 gms per km (well to wheel) predicted CO2 rating, the Urban Car sure sounds impressive, but is a on-board hydrogen tank really efficient? Will you be looking with assistance from your partners, to develop a system of on-board hydrogen production?

A: We don't want to have onboard production of hydrogen.  There was in the early days a plan by many to use onboard reformation of hydrocarbons to power the fuel cell, but that was given up in almost all quarters as it involves carrying a huge chemical plant around with you.  The reason for it was that it was perceived to be difficult to store enough hydrogen and it is easier to carry a liquid fuel.  The popular answer now is generally to squeeze more hydrogen into a smaller volume, and there is great interest in a breakthrough in this.  However, our approach instead is to use less hydrogen, and we argue that in that case the 'problem' goes away [see self-inflicted barriers above] and we can store enough hydrogen for a sensible range using existing technology, although we will be delighted to see breakthroughs and better storage systems.

Q: When can we next expect to see you display the Urban Car to the public, for those that didn't see it in June?

A: I am sure there will be other plans soon but it will be at the GreenMotorExpo in Triton Square, London, NW1 3HF, 24th September, and the British Inventions Show, Alexandria Palace, 14-17th October, [www.britishinventionshow.com]

Q: You hope to be in production by 2013, supplemented by you 'open source' approach. Tell us what readers need to do if they want to get involved with the Riversimple car?

A: The open source programme is starting up at the 40 Fires Foundation –www.40Fires.org . We are in the process of building the collaborative tools and environment and then will be gradually uploading elements of the design as resources allow, trialling the process with specific elements of the design first. No-one has yet done open source in the hardware world like it is done in the software world, and it is much harder!


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